JumpTV set to launch subscription-based specialty television on the web

JumpTV.com Inc. will launch 15-20 specialty television stations streamed online next month on a subscription basis, says its president and CEO. Farrel Miller tells Canadian NEW MEDIA that the stations will be offered securely for between US$7.95 and US$9.95 per month and that he has deals with the broadcasters to proceed. The move follows a year-and-a-half of free access to 11 of the TV services and marks a new stage in development for the company, which has raised a firestorm of controversy over its proposed North American retransmission plans. Since coming to international attention in September 2000 with a proposal to retransmit North American over-the-air TV signals to viewers via the Internet, Miller has emphasized that JumpTV will rely on non-Canadian broadcast signals to build his business. At the time, he told CNM that "that’s where I would say JumpTV is really different from a lot of the existing portals, or a lot of the existing companies on the Internet – a lot of them based in the United States." (CNM, Oct. 4/00). It was a theme he revisited several times, most recently at the August 2001 Convergence: ITV and Beyond conference in Toronto, and then again last week. "None of our investors got involved to become involved in a long and protracted legal battle," he says. Though attention has been focused on the company as the rogue successor to iCraveTV.com Inc., the company quietly launched eight free services from Europe, Asia and North America in May 2001 (CNM, May 3/01). Those services have been expanded slightly and will likely be offered as preview services for another week after the move to a subscription model is made, says Miller. The channels will be offered on an à la carte basis and Miller says many of the subscribers will likely come from the United States. The number of Americans viewing the channels compared to Canadians is eight-to-one, he notes. Miller says he’s unsure how many customers he’ll lose in the move, but says audiences for the free services to date have been "mushrooming." He says he’ll pursue content deals with broadband ISPs and others and advertising will partly be accomplished through marketing deals struck with the channels themselves. Miller concedes that subscription-based web content has been slow to take off, if not an outright failure, to date, but says Jump isn’t in the business of selling a web site. Rather, he notes, he will be among the first to try selling subscription-based television via the web. Questions have been posed in recent months about JumpTV’s viability, especially after lengthy Copyright Board of Canada and Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage proceedings, but Miller says those endeavours haven’t proven overly onerous for the company. "One might be surprised to find out how much we had to spend," he says. Asked how long the company has to build a viable subscription business, Miller says he has enough backing for three years of operation. The move comes a little under a year after Jump broached the subject of a subscription-based service in an unpublished web survey. In November 2001, Jump consultant Dan O’Hara of Ottawa posted a survey to his server that read: "JumpTV will soon discontinue our free (banner advertising based) television retransmission. Instead, we will be offering a subscription based service which includes: No banner advertising. Full screen viewing option. Even better streaming quality. Several new channels. If our cable/DSL subscription service was offered at a monthly price of 7.95 (US$) for one channel, or 11.95 (US$) for all our regular channels, would you probably subscribe? Users of the dial-up speed would pay 4.95 (US$) and 7.95 (US$) respectively." The survey was pulled within hours of O’Hara being contacted by Canadian NEW MEDIA (CNM Update, Nov. 7/01).

JumpTV set to launch subscription-based specialty television on the web

News | 10/03/2002 4:00 am EDT

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